Mar 4, 2010

Friday the 13th Victim of the Week: Annie

She may not have been THEEEE first victim in the Friday the 13th series, but good ol' Annie (Robbi Morgan) was certainly the first victim to let audiences know that hey, this is Friday the effing 13th, and it ain't no Halloween.

We first meet the impossibly adorable, impossibly perky Annie when she strolls into town bearing a giant backpack and a smile. She asks some locals how much farther it is to Camp Crystal Lake, a query that earns her some decidedly "Bitch, please." looks from everyone within earshot.

Undaunted, Annie hops into Enos's truck for a ride closer to her final destination (pun totally intended). Rather than heed the trucker's cries of "Quit!" or Crazy Ralph's cries of "It's got a death curse!" warning her about Camp Blood, Annie climbs into Mrs. Voorhees's Jeep of Doom to continue her journey.

Annie begins to talk excitedly about her upcoming stint as the camp's cook- it's long been her dream to work with children (not kids- that makes them sound like little goats) and she just can't wait to get to Camp Crystal Lake! You know Mrs. Voorhees had a fucking vice grip on the steering wheel the whole time, thinking to herself, "If you love children so much then WHY DID YOU LET MY JASON DROWN 20 YEARS AGO?"

When the Jeep of Doom zips on by the turnoff for camp, Annie begins to think things might be a bit hinky.

After her suggestion that the driver...you know, stop driving the wrong way is met with the pedal pressed to the metal, Annie knows that something's hinky and she takes a leap outta dat Jeep. Go, Annie, go!

Hobbling admirably on a twisted ankle, Annie heads into the woods in an attempt to escape the driver, who's now become her pursuer. Unfortunately, Annie trips one too many times; plaid meets plaid in a battle to the death! Okay, it's not so much a battle as it is one person ignoring pleas for mercy and opting to make with le slash-slash.

Friday the 13th is now roughly 30 years old (holy crapping crap) and though it may not seem so shocking nowadays, scenes like this one made the film groundbreaking. It wasn't the first slasher flick, but Friday's graphic violence set it apart from its predecessors and marked it as the first true entry in the slasher cycle. Subtlety and artistry were gone, and explicit gore was in. Friday the 13th was crass, silly...and yes, it was scary. As far as I'm concerned, it's still all of those things three decades on. R.I.P. Annie!

17 comments:

She's so niiiiiice! That's one thing I like so much about this film. They're not DEEP characters, but for the most part they come across like real young adults. I love looking back on the days when characters weren't completely irritating.

Ha! Well, that's certainly a compliment. I think F13 gets a tad unfairly maligned. It's not GREAT, and I understand it's not going to be to everyone's tastes, but I think for what it is it works remarkably well.

I agree with F13 being unfairly maligned. I think this is probably mostly to do with it being lumped in with the teleporting, mutating, super powered, zombie-ized Jason than with this movie on its own.

The characters are decent rather than being in the vein of 'oh, god! we're trapped with these repugnant ass-hats for 90 min!!'. And I didn't see Pam coming until well into the blood fest, so it had that going for it too. And, while I didn't particularly like the final girl overly much, I also never screamed at the screen - oh, just die!

I made this one of my first purchases after discovering DVD (the very first was Das Boot and the first X-Men movie) and I look forward to reviewing it.

Poor Annie, never did no-one no harm, never did the sex nor the drugs neither. Bad Mrs Voorhees...

Just noticed that rather than the exploding titles of some of the later chapters, this first chapter title is itself defenestrated, thus setting the crashing through glass motif that runs through the series.

I love these frames because Annie's expression in her final moments is one of my favorite things in the movie. She looks so *mournful*: rather than "Aggh, I am dying in great pain," her face says, "Alas, how has it all come to this? O for what might have been." She's such a sweetie. RIP indeed!

Like the first poster, even though I've seen this movie countless times, I still hope that Annie gets away. She's one of the few characters from the series that I really wish would have either lived or made it longer. She was very likeable.